Pre-existing purpose and value vs Adminstrative rules

[Alex Bligh]

--On 09 September 2005 15:40 -0400 "Forrest J. Cavalier III" 
<forrest at mibsoftware.com> wrote:


>> 11. *The license must not be duplicative.*  That is, it is up to the
>>     submitter to demonstrate that the license solves a problem not
>>    sufficiently addressed by an existing certified license.
>>    Certification may be denied to any submitted license, even a
>>    technically OSD- conformant license, if OSI deems it duplicative.
>
> 11. *Licenses submitted for approval must not be duplicative and must be
> reusable.*

I am not sure this is a great way of putting it (at least if you are
intending deleting the trailer). The original text is better (but still not
perfect).

I think would be better "must not be entirely duplicative", or "should not
entirely duplicate the function of another license".

The reason is quite simple: the current wording suggests reusing the text
of existing licenses is a bad thing. I *think* everyone agrees that reusing
text (at least good text) is a *good* thing. Rewriting the same license in
a different way to avoid "duplication" would be lunacy.

I think the original text could still be improved by positively encouraging
reuse of existing (quality) drafting.

Alex